Weekly Thing 293 / WHOIS, Glowtime, Place
Welcome to Weekly Thing 293! Thanks for joining me on a journey of learning and exploring interesting things. Sent from Cannon Lake, MN.
Hello there! 👋
Like many of you I watched the Apple 'Glowtime' event unveiling Apple's fall device updates. Many predictable things but the Health items caught my eye. Apple has been building on health for years. The Health app on iOS is my hub (vault?) for health data. The primary reason I trust Apple's positioning on privacy is because they know trust is required for people to use health features. They will make far more revenue providing health features than they ever could by selling our data.
None of this is all that new, but the sleep apnea and hearing features felt like a milestone to me.
I've had to learn about sleep apnea. Tammy has observed me having periods of paused breathing. A diagnosis of sleep apnea is based on a frequency threshold that requires data collection.
I mentioned this to my Doctor and he suggested a sleep study. I never did it. Why? First, it took several weeks to get with another Doctor to discuss it. Then I have two options. The good one is to get some device rented from the hospital that I’m sure costs thousands of dollars and bring it home to sleep with. Or, come to the facility and sleep in some strange room with a bunch of stuff connected to me.
How about the new option? Get an Apple Watch and wear it while you sleep for a month. I did a lower tech version of this myself using the Oura Ring's sleep features. Looking at that data with my Doctor we determined I was okay. Much easier and a way better experience.
And then hearing. How about the AirPods as not just headphones but also as an ear test you can take anywhere at anytime? And then create a hearing profile that becomes an ad hoc hearing aid? Here we have the device itself doing the diagnostic, and then delivering a solution in realtime!
There are many roles that these devices we carry in our pockets and on our wrists perform for us. Being a portable health advisor, diagnostic, and in some cases solution has huge potential to bring a lot of good to people.
It was also interesting to me that Apple Intelligence was all over the announcements, except when it came to Health. There has to be a plethora of capabilities you could get by combining those two things, but I suspect that is a bridge too far on privacy and security for most people.
Currently
Dining: We finally made our way to Órale Mexican Eats which is pretty close to us. It was okay but I wanted more punch in the flavors. Very convenient location though.
Watching: We've started watching Only Murders in the Building season four. Curious to see where the story goes this season!
Flat light on the walking path as the sun is setting.
Sep 10, 2024
Bredesen Park, Edina
Notable
Every webpage deserves to be a place
I love this experimental way of showing multiple people looking at the same web page and even allowing them to communicate with each other. We should have a bunch more experimentation with this kind of social capability. I love the idea of giving the web physicality and a sense of being somewhere with others.
The Effects of Generative AI on High Skilled Work
I’m not sure I would put too much weight into this study due to the small sample set of just three organizations (Microsoft, Accenture, Anonymous Company). It is good to see this studied and interesting to see the results.
Our preferred estimates suggest that usage of the coding assistant causes a 26.08% (SE: 10.3%) increase in the weekly number of completed tasks. When we look at outcomes of secondary interest, our results support this interpretation, with a 13.55% (SE: 10.0%) increase in the number of code updates (commits) and a 38.38% (SE: 12.55%) increase in the number of times code was compiled. For Microsoft we observe both the developers' tenure and their seniority as measured by job title. We find that Copilot significantly raises task completion for more recent hires and those in more junior positions but not for developers with longer tenure and in more senior positions. Prior work has shown that when workers are conducting the same tasks, generative AI helps lower-ability or lower- experience workers more (e.g., Brynjolfsson, Li, and Raymond 2023; Noy and Zhang 2023). Our results extend this finding by showing that even when workers are performing tasks according to their tenure or seniority, generative AI increases productivity more for lower-ability workers.
I feel like we need more understanding about the decrease benefit associated with seniority. One conclusion could be that they are more resistant to usage, or more habitual in their approach. It could also suggest that they find the LLM recommendations less effective?
However you approach it though it is clear that there is a benefit to be had for developers to use AI capabilities.
For Starters #33: Your First Pitch is This One Sentence
My friend Garrick with a super simple way to talk about the value you bring to the market.
This gets us to the only template you need when you're starting something new. You don't need a Business Model Canvas or a Lean Canvas or any kind of multi-page business plan, just this one sentence.
"I help {role} at {adjective}, {adjective} {organization type} struggling with {persistent problem}."
Simple. And spot on.
Why GitHub Actually Won
Great article from one of the founders of GitHub.
I can boil it down to exactly two reasons that happened to resonate with each other at the perfect frequency.
- GitHub started at the right time
- GitHub had good taste
It is crazy how important timing is. The YouTube founders would say the same thing. YouTube wasn't the first site with video, but it was for sure at the right time.
I like the expansion on good taste.
We cared about the developer experience and had the creativity to throw away assumptions about what it was supposed to be and build how we wanted to work. Everyone else tried to build what they thought they could sell to advertisers or CTOs.
Focus on the experience. It matters for everyone, even developers.
My Thoughts About Apple’s iPhone 16 “Glowtime” Event – On my Om
I appreciated Om's perspective on the most recent iPhone announcements. He frames up the cycle we are in very well:
It’s hard to internalize, but we are at the end of the “phone hardware” cycle. From 1996 to 2007, we had a world dominated by 12-keypad phones that did a few other things. From 2007 to 2024, we have had a rectangular slab that does many things, including making calls. The first cycle lasted 11 years. This one has lasted longer. Toward the end of the first mobile phone era, it became all about incremental changes: better cameras, longer battery life, cooler colors, slightly different shapes, curves and, of course, thinner devices. Sound familiar?
The physical device is really just the same glass with very few buttons around it. Everything else is in the software.
The new reMarkable Paper Pro adds a color display
I have a reMarkable 2 and while I don't use it that much I am very impressed with the device. My biggest issue with it is actually solved with the Paper Pro and the front light. My fifty-year-old eyes don't do so well in dark rooms and without a lot of light I find the reMarkable 2 hard to see. The front light would be a big win. I've always been impressed at the low latency of the pen, and it is twice as fast on this one. Color will be nice to add as well. They have also made steady improvements in the software. This new one is very enticing.
Rogue WHOIS server gives researcher superpowers no one should ever have | Ars Technica
This is a pretty incredible story and I’m surprised that there is no cryptographic signing requirements for a WHOIS server like this. In this case this researcher simply setup a WHOIS server where one previously was and a bunch of things just trusted it because it was there!
To Harris’s surprise, his server received queries from slightly more than 76,000 unique IP addresses within a few hours of setting it up. Over five days, it received roughly 2.5 million queries from about 135,000 unique systems. The entities behind the systems querying his deprecated domain included a who’s who of Internet heavyweights comprising domain registrars, providers of online security tools, governments from the US and around the world, universities, and certificate authorities, the entities that issue browser-trusted TLS certificates that make HTTPS work.
It seems wild that such a critical function wouldn't require some form of certificate to prove it is valid.
Windows NT vs. Unix: A design comparison by Julio Merino
I enjoyed this read comparing the designs of Unix and Windows NT.
NT was groundbreaking technology when it launched. As I presented above, many of the features we take for granted today in systems design were present in NT since its inception, whereas almost all other Unix systems had to gain those features slowly over time. As a result, such features don’t always integrate seamlessly with Unix philosophies.
Today, however, it’s not clear to me that NT is truly “more advanced” than, say, Linux or FreeBSD. It is true that NT had more solid design principles at the onset and more features that its contemporary operating systems, but nowadays… the differences are blurry. Yes, NT is advanced, but not significantly more so than modern Unixes.
It is particularly interesting how much NT got right, but Unix was able to catch up and ultimately the power of an open-source multiparty ecosystem won out.
Journal
The New Standards put on an incredible show at The Dakota tonight marking their 20 year anniversary as a band! We had a great night returning with our friends Mike & Ellen Rock for the show.
See list of The New Standards shows.
I got to thinking how many times we’ve seen The New Standards after we saw them last night. I searched my blog and created a list of The New Standards shows. I was surprised to find 21 shows and an additional 11 Holiday Shows -- exceeding our list of Brandi Carlile shows!
Tyler's Playdate Game: The 5 Piece Sword
Sep 7, 2024 at 11:41 AM
The most open of the Summer Challenges I gave Tyler was to create a Playdate Experience. No requirements other than something that could be played on the Playdate and created in Pulp. Tyler really got into this and created a full interactive game experience -- The 5 Piece Sword. 🗡️
He wrote additional blog posts on the simple enemies in the game, how the heart system for health works, and the spikes and spike balls in the game.
The game is fun to play and has a lot of challenging levels. He’s still crafting the final boss stage and at that point he may publish the file so others could load it. Nicely done! 👏
You would be hard set to find a better desert than Pizzeria Lola's warm Chocolate Chip Cookies and Fresh S'more Cookies with delicious soft serve ice cream drizzled with olive oil.
In our neighborhood the Taschler's host an annual Fry Party. What is that? They fire up multiple fryers and the guests bring fun things to fry. We brought Twinkies. Fried Dill Pickles were popular. I tried a Fried Peppermint Patty. It was a fun evening and Tyler and Mazie got to help the hosts!
Our neighborhood. 52nd Street, Lynnhurst.
We all completed the Defeat of Jesse James Days 5k Run/Walk and had a grand time. Tiffany and I walked the course in 57 minutes. Everyone else ran it and Tammy and Mazie put in better times than they expected! Tyler had some cramping that made him have to take some breaks.
Sidewalk poetry found in Northfield in and around this mornings 5k.
Tyler's Gaming PC: GPU Unlocked!
Sep 8, 2024 at 6:31 PM
Tyler hit his savings milestone yesterday so today we went to Microcenter to get the GPU for his gaming rig. A short while later he was carrying out a PURE AMD Radeon™ RX 7800 XT 16GB eager to get it setup.
This is another one of those moments where I realize so much has changed in the last 20+ years since I built my own PCs. These graphics cards or more appropriately classified as a whole computer on a PCI-E card. Three fans, massive heatsink, and its own power connections.
He got it in mostly on his own and got the drivers installed. Minutes later he was getting high 200 frames per second on some test games, even hitting over 300 fps at some times. The quality of the graphics is amazing. 🤩
After our TeamSPS Kubb Tournament a small group of us had a pickup game that was awesome. We had all 10 kubbs in play!
Weekly Thing Forum 🆕
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- Reading human kind history & evolution - Harari's view
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Briefly
A hockey rink 1/10th the size with two full teams. → Big Hockey Players, Itty-Bitty Rink
You really shouldn't do this kind of thing in bash, but I love that you can and that he did. 😂 → I Wrote a Static Site Generator in Bash - Paul's Weblog
The Great Wave is Tyler's favorite art work and these various facts about it are interesting. → 10+ Things to Know about The Great Wave | The Art Institute of Chicago
The Ultra 2 in black with the black band — wow! 🤩 → Apple Watch Ultra 2 now available in black titanium - Apple
Thompson suggesting that Apple has really completed the turn from a hardware company with a blend of software and services, to a services company enabled by a hardware platform. → Boomer Apple – Stratechery by Ben Thompson
Incredible story of an entire creator and fan loop created by bots and generating royalty dollars fraudulently. → Man Arrested for Creating Fake Bands With AI, Then Making $10 Million by Listening to Their Songs With Bots
The headline is a bit misleading, or at least omits that this is really about automation bias. Automation bias combined with results that are not predictable is a dangerous mix. → Why AI Can Push You to Make the Wrong Decision at Work
Very cool visual walk through of an extremely simple LLM. → LLM Visualization
Indieweb movement to promote supporting things you enjoy on the web by paying $1 a month. I like this idea and signed up to support a few of these blogs already. I even setup my own One a Month. 🤔 → One a Month Club
Fortune
That is all for this week. Let's crack open the fortune…
Bank error in your favor. Collect $200. 💰
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